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British police have
become “glorified security guards to police a practice that many of the public
we represent oppose,” North Wales Police and Crime Commissioner Arfon Jones has
admitted in relation to fracking protests. The police chief added that he
opposes “providing security to a well-funded private enterprise free of
charge.”

It’s a timely
intervention. While the Government has been less vocal in its support of
fracking over the last year, the state has been prepared to spend millions of pounds on policing fracking resistance across the country,
protecting corporate interests against the wishes of local communities.

And as we head into
2018, we see fracking companies trying to exploit Brexit through direct and
indirect lobbying and by taking advantage of fears around energy security.

Leading the way is
INEOS. The multinational chemicals company turned fracking giant has a turnover
of $40 billion and is well connected to those in power. It
has fracking licence interests across North and South Yorkshire, the East
Midlands and Cheshire and is not shy about wanting to be “at the very forefront of this transformational industry”.

When Scotland banned
fracking in October 2017, INEOS moved quickly. The company and its business
partner Reach are now seeking a judicial review to overturn the ban. Tom Pickering,
Operations Director of INEOS Shale said of the legal challenge that “if
Scotland wants to continue to be considered as a serious place to do business”
it needed to follow “proper procedures” and offer financial compensation to
companies like INEOS and Reach which have “invested significantly” in the
development of unconventional oil and gas development.

The firm is also seeking a court order so it can carry out seismic surveys at the National Trust owned Clumber
Park in Nottinghamshire, after the Trust refused to grant access.

INEOS has also sought
Government intervention on two of its planning applications for exploration
wells in Marsh Lane, Derbyshire, and Harthill, south Yorkshire. Its appeals
will now be heard at public inquiries after the company
complained the local councils were taking too long to reach their decisions.

Pickering told theDerbyshire Times that INEOS “has always prioritised
local people” and that they were “disappointed that a strong shale presence in
the region has not been more welcomed given the recent manufacturing decline in
the region.”

But, as the Tory
Derbyshire County Council leader, Barry Lewis pointed out, INEOS “is the very organisation which
has pushed to have a local decision taken out of local hands.”

INEOS has also
secured a draconian High Court injunction against any anti-fracking protestors
who obstruct its fracking activity. Two campaigners – Joe Corré and Joe Boyd -have
said they will keep trying to fight the injunction in the courts after permission for an
appeal was refused in December.

Fighting off “efforts
to regulate shale gas”

For
fracking firms like INEOS – as for many corporations – Brexit is something to exploit to the fullest, with the Department For Exiting the European Union (DExEU) meetings seemingly happy to
oblige. Analysis released by Corporate Europe
Observatory and Global Justice Now found that 70 per cent of all meetings held
by DExEU ministers between October 2016 and June 2017, were with business
representatives.

DExEU ministers had
three meetings with INEOS between October and December 2016, including a chemical sector roundtable with other companies in October 2016. On the same day as INEOS’s
November 2016 meeting with Robin Walker, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State
for Exiting the European Union, Walker assured the Chemical Industries Association
Conference that the UK's negotiating position would be to continue to work
towards “freer trade across the globe.”

The minister invited
industry representatives to “continue to engage directly with my office,
directly with the Government” and said that Brexit offered “a potential to
minimise bureaucratic legislative burdens.”

Public records of the
meetings between INEOS and DExEU minsters list the purpose of the meetings as
“Discussion on United Kingdom's Exit from EU” but do not offer any more indication
of what was discussed – and openDemocracy’s attempts to obtain more detail on
the content of the INEOS meetings through FOI requests have been refused.

As Vicky Cann of the
Corporate Europe Observatory points out, the ministerial meeting data is likely
to be just the tip of the iceberg. “It doesn't give you a real sense of the
partnership working which will be happening throughout government, or the
reality of what this is going to mean for business and what business wants,”
she says.

“That is not to say
that that is all malign or dodgy but I think there is a whole picture of
lobbying going on that none of us are really aware of and where it's very hard
to get the information... it's highly plausible that decisions and polices will
be made without proper scrutiny, without proper balance.”

We do know – thanks to an investigation by
Friends of the Earth – that INEOS has been pushing the government to use Brexit
as a chance to exempt the chemicals sector from climate policy costs and green
taxes through the Chemistry Growth Partnership.

The fracking industry
has supporters at the top of DExEU. David Davis, the Secretary of State for
Exiting the European Union has expressed support for fracking in the past, and at the end of October
Lord Martin Callanan was appointed Minister of State at the Department. Callanan
previously complained that the European Parliament “wants every tiny
exploration [on shale] to be governed by onerous environmental impact
assessments.” He was the leader of the European Conservatives and Reformists
Group from 2011-2014. The Group's Taking the EU in a new direction report. which carries a foreword from Callanan, proudly
states that it “has fought off efforts to regulate against Shale gas.”

It's not just on the
UK side where the fossil fuel industry is playing a role in the corporate
capture of Brexit. Research from Corporate Europe Observatory
shows the gas lobby spent over €100 million in Brussels in 2016. Groups working
to challenge the gas industry have spent just €3.4million.

Keeping the lights on

It's not just
lobbying of ministers that fracking companies like INEOS are relying on. They
have also sought to exploit the 'take control' narrative that dominated
campaigns to leave the European Union, arguing that the UK needs to produce
more of its own energy and that fracking operated by corporate interests,
instead of greener community-led energy, is the way to do this.

This narrative also
plays into some remainers' fears about how Brexit will impact on trade and
energy security and whether we will be able to 'keep the lights on'.

Even before the
referendum, INEOS's billionaire chair and founder, Jim Ratcliffe argued that “the Brits are
perfectly capable of managing the Brits and don’t need Brussels telling them
how to manage things... I just don’t believe in the concept of a United States
of Europe.”

He said that “layers
and layers” of European legislation were making the continent cumbersome,
inefficient and expensive.

Ratcliffe relocated
INEOS' headquarters to Switzerland in 2010 in a bid to save on taxes but returned many of the company's businesses back to London in 2015, citing a “friendlier” government.

Pickering has argued
that the result of 2016's referendum has put fracking in a more positive light.
“I have seen a shift in the tone after the Brexit vote. People are saying that
‘you just need to be getting on with this. We want you to do it properly, but
this stuff matters now’,” he told
the Scotsmannewspaper.

“People understand
that when you present the figure to them that over 50 per cent of our gas is
being imported that is a cheque we are writing out every day to another
nation.”

It's not just INEOS
hoping to play into this narrative: “An independent Britain needs an
independent supply of energy. Security of supply becomes even more important
now,” Stephen Bowler, chief executive of gas developer IGas, told Reuters just after the referendum.

But fracking
companies have their work cut out. Thanks to unwavering campaigns and direct
action, political will on the issue seems significantly diminished, despite the
Conservative's election manifesto assertion that shale energy “could
play a crucial role in rebalancing our economy”.

The Government's
cognitive dissonance on this issue has been well outlined by David Powell at the New Economics
Foundation. The Industrial Strategy it published in November only gave
fracking a brief mention and its delayed Clean Growth Strategy, published in October, doesn't mention
it at all.

However, less than
two weeks after the Clean Growth Strategy was released Theresa May answered a question about Scotland’s fracking ban with
this statement at Prime Minister's Questions: “I think that shale gas does have
the potential to power economic growth in this country. I think it will support
thousands of jobs in the oil and gas industries and in other sectors and it
will provide a new domestic energy source.”

The fact that it has
taken fracking companies so long to get not very far in the UK is testament to
the people who have been uncompromising in their resistance for many years. The
industry is poised to limp ahead in 2018 – at least in England – but, however
Brexit pans out, we know that there will be people there to meet it.